nd I being fellow-sufferers, and having
confidences as such, Joe imparted a confidence to me, the moment I
raised the latch of the door and peeped in at him opposite to it,
sitting in the chimney corner.

"Mrs. Joe has been out a dozen times, looking for you, Pip. And she's
out now, making it a baker's dozen."

"Is she?"

"Yes, Pip," said Joe; "and what's worse, she's got Tickler with her."

At this dismal intelligence, I twisted the only button on my waistcoat
round and round, and looked in great depression at the fire. Tickler
was a wax-ended piece of cane, worn smooth by collision with my tickled
frame.

"She sot down," said Joe, "and she got up, and she made a grab at
Tickler, and she Ram-paged out. That's what she did," said Joe, slowly
clearing the fire between the lower bars with the poker, and looking at
it; "she Ram-paged out, Pip."

"Has she been gone long, Joe?" I always treated him as a larger species
of child, and as no more than my equal.

"Well," said Joe, glancing up at the Dutch clock, "she's been on the
Ram-page, this last spell, about five minutes, Pip. She's a coming! Get
behind the door, old chap, and have the jack-towel betwixt you."

I took the advice. My sister, Mrs. Joe, throwing the door wide open,
and finding an obstruction behind it, immediately divined the cause, and
applied Tickler to its further investigation. She concluded by throwing
me--I often served as a connubial missile--at Joe, who, glad to get hold
of me on any terms, passed me on into the chimney and quietly fenced me
up there with his great leg.

"Where have you been, you young monkey?" said Mrs. Joe, stamping her
foot. "Tell me directly what you've been doing to wear me away with fret
and fright and worrit, or I'd have you out of that corner if you was
fifty Pips, and he was five hundred Gargerys."

"I have only been to the churchyard," said I, from my stool, crying and
rubbing myself.

"Churchyard!" repeated my sister. "If it warn't for me you'd have been
to the churchyard long ago, and stayed there. Who brought you up by
hand?"

"You did," said I.

"And why did I do it, I should like to know?" exclaimed my sister.

I whimpered, "I don't know."

"I don't!" said my sister. "I'd never do it again! I know that. I may
truly say I've never had this apron of mine off since born you were.
It's bad enough to be a blacksmith's wife (and him a Gargery) without
being your mother."

My thoughts strayed from that ques